


Shell Shocked

by Shamashe



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Major Character Injury, Shell Shock, War rememberance, suspicion of sabotage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 06:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5364947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shamashe/pseuds/Shamashe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phryne and Jack are wounded during an investigation and relive a war memory in states of shock.  Mac suspects foul play.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shell Shocked

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bellairian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellairian/gifts).



> Don’t know why, this just popped into my head one night. Who knows, it could turn into investigative chapters? 
> 
> As you probably know, the term "shell shock" is now generally referred to as PTSD.
> 
> For Bellarian and the love of history. Thanks for the Italics :-)

“Phryne!  Phryne! Are you all right?” Mac was gently shaking her, trying to bring her back.  She wasn’t unconscious, just in shock.  “Phryne, where’s Jack? Can you tell me where Jack is Phryne?”

Phryne opened her eyes and just looked at her with a blank stare.  Mac quickly shined a light in her eyes and Phryne threw a hand up reflexively.  “Nooo!  I must help him, I must go to him, I have to go!”  She struggled to get up, but Mac kept her in place.  “I have to gooo.” 

“Go where, Phryne, help who?” Mac looked concerned, Phryne was clearly somewhere else in her head – probably from a concussion. “Where is Jack, Phryne?” 

Phryne looked up wildly, “Over there, behind the trench, near the light, he’s caught by the fence, I have to go free him, he’s hurt – let me go!”  She struggled again. 

“Go where, Phryne”

“That field, by the trench, can’t you see him?” She was crying, pleading.

“Phryne, where’s Jack?” 

“Over there,” Phryne pointed limply before passing out.  Mac had her nurse watch her as she went in the direction Phryne had pointed, though she didn’t know if Phryne knew what she was doing right now or where she even was.

The bomb had caused significant damage to the building and she was lucky to have gotten out safely.  Her deep cuts and bruises would heal and her arm would need to stay in a sling, but it was her mind that Mac was worried about.  She seemed to be having some sort of shell shock or flashbacks. 

While they put her on a stretcher, Mac went to find Jack.  Reports placed him on the other side of the building when the bomb exploded, but she hadn’t seen him yet. “How did they get into this mess anyway?” Mac grumbled as she walked. “It’s one thing to investigate for an old war friend, but to get damn near blown up is another.”

Suddenly she saw him, “Ah, there he is!  Jack!  Jack!  Jack, can you hear me?  Jack!  It’s Dr. Mac!  Can you hear me?”  Mac looked at him huddled on the ground against the building in classic protect and cover mode.  His clothes were torn and in places, shredded, his leg bleeding heavily from a shrapnel wound.  His head was bleeding too.  He didn’t seem conscious.  But his eyes were open and he had a very distant look in his eyes.  Mac quickly examined and put a tourniquet on his leg, but she had to get them both to the hospital, now!  “Where is that ambulance?”

“Jack, it’s Dr. Mac, can you hear me?”  He just looked dully out to the bright spot light, dangling from the building, sparking like a power line. “She’s coming,” he said, in a voice, like he couldn’t hear himself speak.  “Who’s coming, Jack?”  He just raised his hand and pointed.  Mac didn’t know if he could hear her or not.  “Jack, it’s Dr. Mac, come on, can you get up?  Jack?”

He turned and looked through her and said flatly, “She said she’d come if I needed her, she’ll come.”  “Ok, Jack, let’s get you up now.  I’m going to take you to the hospital.”  He looked at her dully and said,  “She’ll drive you, that what she does.”  Half lifting him, Mac got him into the ambulance that had driven up, with Phryne already inside.  She was very worried that they had both suffered brain damage or were having a shell shock response.

By the time the rear door was closed, Phryne had come to, gotten out of her restraint and was leaning towards Jack, trying to adjust the pressure to his leg.  “I’ll have you there in a moment, Corporal, just hang on.”  Jack looked up at Phryne, seeing her bloodied white nurses uniform and touched her face, saying, “You’re my angel of mercy – you told me you’d be nearby – that you’d watch out for me and you did.”  Jack faded off again.  When Mac got into the ambulance, she found Phryne draped over Jack to protect him, as if protecting him from fallout.  Both were unconscious, but they were holding hands in between their bodies.  Jack's head was turned so that his lips were on her cheek.

Mac looked down at the picture the officer in charge had given her.  He said he found it lying where it had dropped out of Jack’s pocket.  He seemed to think it might be a “personal effect.”  A younger Jack was portrayed in his Army uniform, having just laid down the body of his obviously dead comrade.  In the foreground, was a picture of a young Phryne in a bloody nurses uniform, hand on Jack’s shoulder as he turned his face back towards her.  She was reaching out with the other hand.  The picture was one of fresh grief and shock overlaid by a moment of comforting.  In the background, at the edge of a body strewn battlefield near Villers–Bretonneux, was a freshly bombed building, smoke still rising from the debris.

“If this is where they are,” Mac thought, “More wounds than their cuts will need to be healed.”  She shook her head and looked at the pair of them.  Intrinsically bound by a past they barely recognized in real life, unconsciously bound out of space and time.

Meanwhile, there was no time to find out why they had been investigating at a building where a bomb had been set off.  As they drove away, she saw a man walking around the debris, who looked a great deal like the soldier Jack had carried in the photo.  She had a sudden intuitive thought that perhaps it was the son of Jack’s fallen comrade.

“Could there be a motive attached to this bombing?  It seemed hard to believe that it was a simple explosion from a generator.  If Jack and Phryne were investigating and this man sought some sort of war revenge, was it possible that they had been set up or sabotaged?”  Mac put her hand to her forehead. “God, I’m beginning to sound like them!”

As Jack and Phryne were being prepped for surgery, Mac called Constable Collins with an update.  Perhaps he knew something more about this?

As she waited, Mac couldn’t shake the feeling that they had been the victims of a deliberate attack.  Clearly, they had known each other in the war, even if they didn’t “know” each other then.  But why or how could it be linked to the bomb?  

“It will have to wait,” Mac said to herself.  Right now, she had to get them patched up and brought back to health.  She’d leave the investigating to the police.  Mac squared her shoulders and walked into surgery, ready to breathe life back into them if needed.  “They must come back,” she thought, “They’ve come so far.” 

Mac took a deep breath.  “Scalpel please…”      


End file.
